Two darkened hearts were to become one, but they were separated by the threads of Fate.
Now they find themselves stranded in a cold, hostile world alongside only a handful of survivors, ruled over by a dark, omnipresent force.
Though they are not to...
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For a time, there was nothing. I felt nothing, knew nothing, and understood nothing. It was as if I had become null and void as a being: blocked off from the senses and all dimensions within reality. Then I was falling. Down, down, down in to the black, cold winds rushing loudly past my ears until the point where I felt that the noise had become an earsplitting ambience. Eternity and cold seemed to grasp my skin.
And then I hit the bottom.
I felt no pain, I felt nothing but the frigid air wrapping around me like a blanket. My mind was filled with fog, with confusion. I opened my eyes to see the night sky above me, the stars shining brightly overhead. The chilling winds bit in to my body without mercy. I was naked.
I sat up and looked all around me, and for miles were rolling grassy hills, dark blue in the light of the moon. I would have sat there for a while, contemplating the view, but the chilly air gave me room only to think about finding shelter. I stood up shakily, testing my body after the fall. I felt fine, mostly, but still so wrong. I looked down at myself, seeing every scar, every blemish, every hair, and every muscle still in place, but my mind told me that there was something wrong with me, something out of place. Perhaps even something new.
A shining glint of metal in my right hand caught my eye. I didn't feel anything in my hand, but when I examined the palm of my right hand, my eyes went wide with shock.
Inlaid in to the skin was a symbol that shined in the moonlight. It was gold, and looked more than a little out of place in my skin. It depicted two diagonal lines facing away from each other in a V shape, with a solid metal ring above them. I ran my fingers across it, realizing that it was in fact made of some polished, gleaming material. It was some variety of symbolic mark, I was sure of it.
My mind cleared as my fingers traced the metallic symbol. I remembered the contract, the old house, the wizard, the horrors that he had created. What made my heart skip a beat was remembering Margo. I looked around me hastily, breathing fast, trying to spy her in the dark.
"Margo!" I shouted, struggling to make my voice echo through the hills as loudly as I could. Though my own voice echoed back, this futile endeavor was met with no response, save for my own voice trailing off.
I told myself that she was fine, that she was stronger than I, that she would be able to fend for herself. If the wizard hadn't killed me, he probably had seen no reason to kill her. There would be no point to it.
My body began to shudder, and quickly the frosty wind became unbearably vicious. I concentrated, trying to summon a fire with which to warm myself, but no magic came of my efforts. I tried again, but there was no trace of fire, nothing to suggest that I had indeed done anything.
Behind me I heard a noise like labored breathing, but somehow different, strange, almost sickly. I turned around to see a humanoid creature, emaciated and clad in rags, its face having only a mouth, with razor sharp teeth dripping with thick saliva. A strange mixture of pity and fear overtook me as I realized what it was: another one of the dark wizard's morbid experiments. Its mouth seemed to open unnaturally wide, and twitched at the corners. As it lunged at me with a bestial roar, extending its clawed hands in an attempt to grab me, I turned and ran. My body was overtaken with such a strong fight-or-flight response that it refused to even scream. All any part of me cared about was survival, only the basest instincts of a human body. I had been reduced to prey.
I just looked at the ground and ran, hoping against hope that fate would grant me one last smile, one that would come in the form of a house, sword, or any form of safe haven it wished. No longer did I care about the cold. The sound of roars behind me echoed in the night, the bloodthirsty horror chased me without remorse and without pause, and my heart sunk even lower when I heard several more of the creatures shout behind me in guttural noises that resembled, but were not by any means, speech.
When I heard the sharp whinnying of horses in the distance, I almost cried. If there were people out there, they could help me. They could save me. A small, swinging lantern's fire came in to view up ahead, only a pinprick of red light in the distance. I cared not to who it belonged, but if it belonged to whoever had the horse, then I would do anything for their help.
It was as if I were riding on wind itself. The lantern's warm glow came more fully in to view, and I saw a person there, sitting atop a black horse. More lanterns came in to view, and then the shooting began. The sounds of crossbows firing, their bolts whizzing past me and impaling themselves in the violations behind me with deadly accuracy. I knew not who these people were, but they were my allies, at least for the moment.
Still, the creatures' cries sounded loudly through the night behind me, but then I heard something behind me that made my hot blood run cold for a very ominous second.
"Not worth it." A voice said, one that sounded gravelly and breathless.
Then the sounds of the footsteps behind me started going the opposite direction. They retreated away from us with the same intensity that they had chased me with.
Loud cheering and celebration erupted around me in startling abruptness. I couldn't help but feel happy along with them as I started to breathe a little more deeply, and a little slower. This was a close call.
I heard the sound of a heavily armored man dismounting his horse and dropping to the grassy earth below. I turned around to look at him, a man about the same height as me, clad in thick armor marked by its unusually angular design. He put his hand on my shoulder and laughed.
"Well, seems we got us another wizard scrag on our hands, huh?" he asked in a colloquial dialect, addressing those who were behind him. He then grabbed my right hand, quickly examined the mark that was inlaid in to my palm and laughed before looking at me once again. "Welcome to the family, scrag!"
Author's Note: First off I'd like to say thanks for reading this chapter. I very much appreciate the kind words. With this chapter, we're starting to get in to the first real arc of the story, so I hope you'll stick around to discover what happens next :D Please vote and tell me your thoughts in the comments below. Thanks!
